


Under Your Skin

by Tough_Girl



Series: Strange Magic Week 2018 [3]
Category: Strange Magic (2015)
Genre: Comedy, F/M, Strange Magic Week 2018, body switching, freaky friday AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2019-07-03 01:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15808755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tough_Girl/pseuds/Tough_Girl
Summary: Bog and Sunny still just don't know how to get along. When the two of them wake up in each other's bodies, the goblin and the elf have to find a way to work together and break the spell...A story for the Freaky Friday theme of Strange Magic Week 2018.





	1. Be the Bigger Man

“OK seriously, can you watch the wings, man? That’s like the third time you’ve whacked me in the last ten minutes!”

“Maybe you should stay out of my way, elf. I’ve nearly tripped over you three times in the last _five_ minutes.”

“Uh, Sunny, the name is Sunny.”

“Whatever.”

The spring storms had hit the Fairy Meadows particularly hard this year, and the one last night had taken off several roofs in the elfish village, including the one on Sunny’s cottage. Dawn of course had immediately offered to help with the repairs and had additionally volunteered both her sister and her sister’s boyfriend.

Which was all well and good, except for the fact that Sunny and the Bog King’s relationship was still a bit prickly. Which was putting it mildly.

The girls were away at the moment, getting more supplies for the patching job, leaving their boyfriends to work on the damaged framework of the structure. Bog was laying down the new reed frame while Sunny used a length of twine to tie the reeds together, making a crosshatch pattern across the hole in Sunny’s roof. The cottage was not large to begin with, and with half the roof gone, it was a tad cramped. Again, putting it mildly.

Sunny tried to scoot backwards out of Bog’s way to work on the next crosshatch and accidentally put a knee down on the goblin’s wing. Bog snarled and snapped at him. “Watch it! Can’t you go two seconds without running into me?”

Sunny threw his hands up. “Maybe if you weren’t so freakishly tall, I’d have more places to step. I didn’t ask to have a walking tree on my roof!”

Bog growled. “Well, at least I’m not the size of an acorn with no wings and the arm’s reach of pill bug. I’d be done already if I didn’t have you dodging around between my feet.”

“And _I’d_ have the job done already if I wasn’t having to watch out for your noodle limbs spread out all over the place. And anyway, it’s my house!”

“What would you do? Sing at it and hope it magically fixes itself?”

“It’s better than what you’d do without my help, which is throw a tantrum at it and hope that scares it into fixing itself!”

Bog snapped his crooked teeth in Sunny’s face, causing the elf to cringe. “I can’t even imagine being a tiny, wee, stubby, useless, clawless, wingless little clod like you. I have no idea what Dawn even sees in you!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Sunny shot back. “Not cool, man! And anyway, if I’m so useless, how’d I manage to get all the way through the Dark Forest, into your castle, and back out, _twice_ , without you catching me, huh?”

“To steal a _love potion_ that you planned on using on Dawn! A few cheap tricks and some gymnastics don’t make you a hero.”

“Well, at least I didn’t kidnap her and lock her up in a dungeon like some slimy villain. Seriously, man, who does that? I’d rather be an elf any day than a bad-tempered, spiky, meanie goblin who locks people up! Maybe, _I_ don’t see what Marianne sees in you!”

Marianne and Dawn arrived back at the impromptu construction site to find their boyfriends on the verge of pummeling each other.

“Hey, hey, hey, whoa,” Marianne shouted, darting between them. “We leave you two alone for five minutes and you’re trying to rip each other’s heads off. What is going on?”

Sunny and Bog glared back at her with equally vitriolic expressions. “He started it!” they both said simultaneously, which prompted them to return to glaring at one another.

Marianne held them apart. “I don’t care who started it, but I’m going to finish it if you two don’t cut it out right now.”

Dawn gave them both her disappointed doe-eyes. “Come on, this is supposed to be an opportunity for all of us to work together and get to know each other better. It’s more fun working with friends.”

“Yeah, who says I’m friends with any two-pint elf?”

“That’s right, maybe I don’t want to be friends with a hulking stick bug goblin!”

“Boys,” Marianne growled in her don’t-push-my-buttons voice.

“Here,” Dawn said, landing next to Sunny. “Why don’t Sunny and I work on finishing the framework? Bog, you can go with Marianne to finish gathering the stuff for the caulking. OK?”

“Fine,” both boys muttered sullenly.

As Marianne and Bog took off, the fairy gave the goblin a sharp elbow in the ribs. “You’re going to have to learn to be nice to him eventually, you know.”

Bog just snorted.

Back on the roof, Dawn gave Sunny a pleading look. “I know he’s prickly, but can’t you at least _try_ to work with him. He’s very likely going to be your brother-in-law one day, so you might as well try getting along with him sooner rather than later.”

Sunny shook his head. “And what am I supposed to do if he doesn’t _want_ to get along?”

Dawn started unwinding a coil of twine. “Then I guess that means you’ll just have to be the bigger man, Sunny.”

Sunny snorted and muttered, “Haha, funny. There are a lot of words you could use to compare me to that goblin, but I’m pretty sure “bigger” is never going to one of them.”


	2. Switched! (Bog)

The Bog King grumbled to himself as he groggily became aware of the world. Strange dreams had waltzed around in his mind all night, leaving him in a disoriented fog. Light slanted in through the window above his nest and dust motes floated in the pale yellow beams of early morning. Bog yawned, blinking and trying to adjust his eyes, which were blurry and out of focus. He shook his head, trying to dispel the sleepy haze in his mind and the eerie echoes of the weird dreams that he couldn’t quite remember now.

Vaguely, a thought skittered through his mind. _I don’t have a window above my nest._

He yawned again and began stretching his arms above his head, arching his back to work out the cricks that invariably built up in his spine.

_Wait, WHAT?_

Bog abruptly snapped into full wakefulness.

He looked around. The room he was in was small – ridiculously small – with a slightly domed roof and clay daub walls. It was decorated with a weird assortment of little knick-knacks: a small glass bauble with glitter inside, a row of beetle figurines lined up on a shelf, several boutonnieres stuck to the wall, and a hat stitched from a ladybug shell hanging on a peg. Bog blinked at the inexplicable sight, his mind still working sluggishly. Above him, he could see the reed frame of the roof, a patched reed frame that looked oddly familiar…

He was in Sunny’s house.

Why in the bloody skies was he in Sunny’s house?

For that matter, how had he even fit through the door?

He sat up with a groan, still glancing around in bewilderment that was rapidly transforming into irritation. That was when he noticed he’d been lying on a mushroom, one that was really far too small for him to have been comfortably sleeping on. With a growing sense of discomfort, he lifted his hands to rub them across his face, as if to scrub the weirdness away.

He froze at the sight of his hands. They were small and stubby, clawless, brown instead of grey-skinned, and four-fingered. They were definitely, definitely, _definitely_ NOT his hands.

Frantically, Bog lifted the hands-that-weren’t-his to his face. His nose had shrunk to a soft little blob, his cheeks were full and round, and his eyes were way too big. Further exploration determined that his head was capped with an enormous tuft of unruly, wiry hair.

Bog almost fell off the mushroom. His limbs were too short, his body too small. He nearly tripped over his misshapen feet and caught himself on the wall. There was a small mirror hanging in an alcove on the far wall, and Bog stumbled awkwardly towards it and gaped at his reflection.

Sunny’s flabbergasted face stared back at him.

Bog gave a strangled yell that was too high-pitched, stumbled back a step, tripped, and fell backwards onto his rear end.

This had to be a dream. This had to be some horrible continuation of the weird fantasies that had haunted him last night during his sleep. There was no way he was Sunny.

He growled and punched himself in the jaw, hoping to startle himself out of the dream. He yelped instead and cradled his now-throbbing cheek as he discovered that elf skin was not nearly as tough as goblin hide. Shaking with a combination of indignation and growing panic, Bog sat down unsteadily on the edge of the mushroom bed once again.

“Sunny? Suuuunny, are you awake?”

Dawn’s sing-song voice came from the other side of the door, along with knocking.

Bog cursed, which again came out in Sunny’s high-pitched squeak, and scrabbled backwards. He couldn’t let anyone see him like this! What was this going to do for his image of the fierce, terrifying, evil king of the Dark Forest?

“Sunny, are you there? It’s a looooovely day and I’ve got a picnic lunch!”

Bog stared at the door in mounting horror, desperately trying to contrive an escape plan or at the very least a plausible excuse to make Dawn go away, when he realized the front door was not latched. He leapt up, misjudged the length of his legs, and went sprawling face-first into a potted azalea, producing a loud clatter.

“Sunny, I know you’re in there. I’m coming in!”

“NO!” Bog squawked, attempting to untangle himself from the plant, but it was too late. The door flew open.

“Sunny Wunny!”

He was attacked by a huge creature that wrapped its long arms around him and nearly lifted him off his feet. Gigantic monarch wings flapped gleefully in his face and dandelion fluff hair tickled in his ear. He spluttered and struggled as Dawn gave him a loud “mwah” of a kiss on the cheek.

“Auuuurrrgghh, Dawn, Dawn, Dawn, STOP! It’s me. STOP!”

Dawn released him and gave him an odd look. “Well, of course it’s you,” she said. “I can see that.” She paused, her eyes trailing slowly over the smudge of potting soil smeared across his cheek. “Are you OK? You look, I don’t know, a little rumpled. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

Bog shook himself, trying to get his wits back after being suddenly tackled by a Dawn who was now twice his size. Bloody tree spirits, and he’d thought she was intimidating when she was only _half_ his size!

She tried to kiss him again, but he fended her off with a yelp. Dawn frowned, putting her hands on her hips. “What’s the matter with you, Sunny? Are we not going on the picnic now?”

Bog’s head was still spinning. “Dawn, you’ve got to listen to me,” he said seriously. “I’m not Sunny. I’m…I’m Bog.”

Dawn bit her lip and he could see she was trying to hide a smile. “Oh Sunny, that’s cute, but you know I only thought of Bog that way because I was love dusted.” She poked him in the chest. “The love potion that _you_ tossed in my face. But anyway, I like you being you, my widdle, sweet Sunny Wunny Bunny Boo.”

She attempted to rub her nose against his. Bog nearly gagged. OK, he was never, ever, _ever_ going to complain about “Boggy Woggy” again.

“No, no, no, Dawn, stop. It’s actually me. I’m Bog. I’m stuck in Sunny’s body, and I don’t know how it happened or how to get out!”

The expression on Dawn’s face was half-bewildered, half-concerned now. “You didn’t fall out of your bed onto your head again, did you?”

“No!”

“Or eat a mushroom that disagreed with you?”

“No!”

“Of fall out of a bush…?”

“Dawn!”

“Or-”

“Dawn, will you listen to me for one bloody second!”

The fairy princess looked taken aback by his tone, but she did stop talking. Bog scrunched up his face, one hand on his forehead. “Look, I…I can _prove_ to you that I really am Bog. Ask me a question that only Bog would know.”

Dawn pursed her lips. “Okaaaaaay, what did I ask Bog to help with last summer for Sunny’s surprise birthday party?”

Bog rolled his eyes. “Dawn, Sunny would know that. He was there are the party and knows that I helped with the lights for the karaoke stage.”

“Shoot, you’re right.” Dawn made an annoyed, scrunchy face that Bog would have found amusing in another circumstance. “Ummm. Oooo! Here’s one!” She gave Bog what she clearly thought was a piercing stare, which involved sticking her lower lip out and squinting her eyes. “In the dungeons when I was love dusted, what did Bog threaten to do if I wouldn’t stop singing?”

Bog scratched his chin, grimaced in surprise when his fingers touched tufted fuzz instead of thorny goblin skin, and scowled as he tried to recall the moment. “I…er…threatened to rip your wings off.”

Bog would have thought it impossible for Dawn’s eyes to get any bigger, but they certainly did. Her hand flew to her mouth. “You really _are_ Bog,” she gasped dramatically.

“I’ve been saying that for the last several minutes,” Bog grumbled.

Dawn’s jaw set in a determined line, and for a moment, Bog caught a glint in her eyes that marked her unmistakably as Marianne’s sister. “We’ve got to do something to get you back. Wait!” Her eyes widened again. “Do you think Sunny is stuck in _your_ body?”

Bog had been so preoccupied with his own predicament that he hadn’t considered this possibility. He gritted his teeth. “If that elf scratches so much as one scale, I’m gonna-URK!”

He yelped as Dawn grabbed him and drug him towards the door. “We’ve got to find Marianne. She’ll know what to do.”

All Bog could do was stumble along after her on his stubby legs, hoping very, very much that Marianne would indeed know what to do, because he most certainly didn’t.


End file.
